Carlos Mencia Says the Constitution Does Not Protect Your Feelings
Carlos Mencia says that there’s nothing in the Constitution of the United States that restricts comedians from saying whatever they need to say to get laughs — so it must be something else that’s been stopping him.
The dawn of “Cancel Culture” created an entire subsection of comedians and comedy fans who fashion themselves to be experts on Constitutional Law as it relates to Facebook’s terms of service. A widespread and wild misunderstanding of the First Amendment has, unfortunately, led to a movement within the comedy community to decry any and all criticism of controversial comics as a human rights violation instead of the expression of those rights that the commentary actually is. Contrary to the all-too-popular belief, the Bill of Rights simply prohibits the government from restricting freedom of speech; it says absolutely nothing to prevent private citizens using that right to tell Mencia that his stand-up act absolutely sucks ass.
On Monday’s episode of right-leading radio host Mandy Connell’s podcast, the Mind of Mencia star shot back at critics who call his lowest-common-denominator comedy tasteless and offensive, proclaiming that, “Your feelings are not protected in the Constitution.” Obviously, Mencia’s not wrong in saying that, but we’re pretty sure subjecting an audience to an hour of his stand-up violates the Geneva Convention.
“If you don’t understand that what I’m saying is intended to be funny and make you laugh, I’m not the one with the problem. Nothing that I say is intended to hurt anyone’s feelings,” Mencia said on the show. He recalled a recent set he performed in Denver, where the audience allegedly erupted into a spirited dialogue on acceptable content and the responsibility of the comic to pick the right targets in the middle of his riff about farting immigrants.
Mencia says that, while he was telling a story revolving around an undocumented character named “Raoul,” an audience member interrupted him to voice their complaints. “Somebody stood up in the audience and said, ‘Hey, dude, why do you keep making fun of those poor people?’ And I said, ‘I’m not making fun of them. In the joke they’re not the victims, they’re the smart ones,’” Mencia explained.
“He said, ‘But why are you talking like that?’ and I said, ‘Because it’s an undocumented immigrant person who just got here, and that’s how this person would talk. I know this person, I’ve met this person and I’m actually doing an impression of an actual person.’” However, in the middle of the interchange, a brave patriot came to Mencia’s defense — the comic claimed, “Somebody stood up and said, ‘No, man. That’s exactly how we talk. You can sit down!’”
It’s unclear what any of this has to do with the Constitution. It’s also puzzling to think that anyone attending Mencia’s set would expect anything besides jokes about immigrants. But really, the most unbelievable part of this story is that, in 2023, there were two or more audience members at a Carlos Mencia show.
